Publication date:
30 October 2014Length of book:
210 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442222205
One of the most controversial figures of the New Deal Era, Harry Hopkins elicited few neutral responses from his contemporaries. Millions admired him and believed the New Deal agencies he headed had rescued them from despair, but many of President Roosevelt’s enemies passionately hated him and derisively called him the “world’s greatest spender” or FDR’s “left-wing Rasputin.”
Hopkins was a paradoxical man: a trained social worker who enjoyed the company of the “swells,” attending cocktail parties, and gambling at the track. Once the quintessential New Dealer, during World War II he single-mindedly devoted himself to aiding the allies, downplaying his previous commitment to social reform and rupturing his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. He was sickly and underweight, yet a profane and blunt-spoken man, lacking in any outward affectations of charisma. Still, FDR curiously saw Hopkins, who moved into the White House on the very day that Germany invaded France in May 1940, as his most suitable successor, the New Deal’s legatee, a possible Democratic nominee for president.
Much of what FDR accomplished would never have been possible without Hopkins—whom the press described as not only FDR’s most trusted official, but also his most intimate personal friend. Analyzing Hopkins’ role in wartime diplomacy and his personal relationships with the twentieth-century’s most indispensable leaders, historian Christopher O’Sullivan offers enormous insight into the most controversial aspects of FDR’s foreign policy, the New Deal Era, and the beginning of modern American history.
Hopkins was a paradoxical man: a trained social worker who enjoyed the company of the “swells,” attending cocktail parties, and gambling at the track. Once the quintessential New Dealer, during World War II he single-mindedly devoted himself to aiding the allies, downplaying his previous commitment to social reform and rupturing his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. He was sickly and underweight, yet a profane and blunt-spoken man, lacking in any outward affectations of charisma. Still, FDR curiously saw Hopkins, who moved into the White House on the very day that Germany invaded France in May 1940, as his most suitable successor, the New Deal’s legatee, a possible Democratic nominee for president.
Much of what FDR accomplished would never have been possible without Hopkins—whom the press described as not only FDR’s most trusted official, but also his most intimate personal friend. Analyzing Hopkins’ role in wartime diplomacy and his personal relationships with the twentieth-century’s most indispensable leaders, historian Christopher O’Sullivan offers enormous insight into the most controversial aspects of FDR’s foreign policy, the New Deal Era, and the beginning of modern American history.
With a detailed, practical analysis of one of the most accomplished power brokers in F.D.R.’s New Deal administration, O’ Sullivan, a professor of history and international studies at the University of San Francisco, focuses on Harry Hopkins, the president’s confidant and catalyst for much of the era’s liberal policies providing government relief and public work jobs such as the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration. Hopkins, a former social worker and an early F.D.R. appointee, believed relief was a citizen’s right in the economic doldrums of the Great Depression, and while operating more than $10 billion in agency budgets he became the 'world’s largest employer, with more than fifteen million people working in various programs he ran.' O’Sullivan shows the significant influence he had with the president, serving as an envoy with Churchill and Stalin during crucial moments during WWII. A key feature of the Hopkins saga is the revelation of his private self: a driven and purposeful personality, he was cool under fire and very calculating in his political choices. O’ Sullivan’s striking portrait captures the life of a resourceful man who did the grunt work for a chief executive whose vision shaped modern American politics.